E-learning + Marketing = Can it be cost saving?

If you think of your ideal design team creating relevant audio-visual content for your e-learning course - what comes to your mind? Director, camera, lights, sounds, make-up, stylist, script, set etc. – the strong backbone for a shoot with quality content usually looks like this and leads to a costly outcome. You may feel out of place with such a request, however, it is important to remember that the marketing department produces shoots, adverts, and lot of other stuff that requires them to spend money on producing quality content. As this is an area that they are familiar with, working with them will gain you valuable insight.

Essentially, you are doing the same job. Therefore, talk to the marketing department as early as possible and each them to talk to you as early as possible as well. How many great ideas are lost due to a lack of time and preparation?

1. Share budget. If you go to your marketing department you want to bring something to them, right? Frankly, there isn't much except you're bringing them more work. And sometimes you can bring them a little bit of budget you can share.
2. Share vendors. It is amazing how in some companies, where HR and learning development and marketing departments are literally on the same floor, and use two completely different sets of people for building anything web-based or making videos or audio files.
3. Use the know-how. What the marketing department is good at is marketing. Look for the launch campaign ideas.

Need ideas? Here are a few:

1. Look for ideas on how you can teach people. Not to train them but to actually sell them an idea.

Think – edutizing and infotainment.

2. Train the customer/partner.

Think - can we create a training course for people on how to use this new service not internally but externally and slip it under the marketing budget not the training budget. And while we're on it, we'll do an internal training as well on that same budget.

3. Co-operate on internal communications. Internal communication sometimes falls into trending development in HR and sometimes into marketing. You can work together by providing them the training service that you're good at.

Think - content building service.

4.  Sell adverts to them. Could you do a 60 second plug in your training?

Join forces with marketing department when designing your e-learning course and know what to ask for and when - what can you do to make this process easier for both sides? In this related video, Raivis and Sergey are going to go into detail with practical examples and suggestions to break that barrier and develop integrated learning design that benefits everyone in the long term.